Right then, gonna read these from bottom to top again, just for the different perspective. So if anybody reads my response from top to bottom, I might reference cards that come "later".
As usual, one of these is mine.
Ivory Tower
Types: Action
Cost: $3P
+1 Card. +1 Action. Choose one: Set aside a card from your hand face down on your Ivory Tower mat; or put up to 3 cards from your mat into your hand. You may look through your cards at any time; trash them at the end of the game.
Clarification: On-trash effects are triggered. They are resolved in player order starting from the player on whose turn the game ended.
"You may look through your cards" should probably be specific to "cards on your mat" for everything to make sense.
OK, so this is like a tactical Native Village mixed with Upgrade and Island. Compared to NV, it is more powerful in that you get to choose a card from your hand to set aside instead of taking one from the deck blindly. It's a tiny bit weaker in that it isn't actually a village. Compared to Upgrade (or Junk Dealer), it doesn't give an extra bonus BUT it is safer in that you can choose not to "trash" anything at all. You can choose the non-trash options, and you could even choose to take back 0. Compared to Island, it is more flexible in that you can use a single copy to set aside multiple VP cards, but it is far more dangerous in that your cards will get trashed if you don't pull them back at the end of the game.
I like it as an enabler for pulling together combo pieces. It also provides a lot of extra utility, as described above. That everything on the mat gets trashed in the end is a neat difference from NV.
A potential problem is that it could feel pretty bad for a player who sets aside VP cards and is unable to bring them back before the end of the game due to bad luck. That's a matter of risk and judgement though, so maybe it's OK. Other than that, I like it.
Elixir (A)
Types: Treasure
Cost: $2P
Worth $2. You may play an Action card from your hand.
I don't like the rules confusion that this would bring up. I get to play an extra Action, so I play Village. That gives me +2 actions, so can I now play more actions? The answer is no, since you are no longer in your action phase, but many people will get confused by that.
Conjuror (A)
Types: Action
Cost: $2P
+3 Cards. You may discard a Potion. If you do, +1 Action. Otherwise, gain a Potion, putting it on top of your deck.
Not that exciting, and perhaps a bit too similar to Retort from the
previous contest. Yeah Retort gets a free extra action, but it still feels similar to me.
Professor
Types: Action
Cost: $2P
+1 Action. +1 Buy. Choose one: All cards cost $1 less this turn; or Action cards cost $2 less this turn. Cards cannot cost less than $0.
Eh, probably OK. Like Elixir (B), not that exciting.
Elixir (B)
Types: Action
Cost: $2P
+1 Card. +1 Action. You may choose an Action card in your hand. Play it twice.
Cantrip and throne... might work? Not particularly exciting to me though, and I can get a little extra confusing if you use Elixir on Elixir.
Druid
Types: Action
Cost: $4P
+1 Card. +1 Action. Choose one: +$2; or +P.
When you buy this, trash all Treasure cards you have in play.
Minty on-buy. That fits well with +P here. Buy a Potion, get your first Druid, and then you can still get more Druids without having to keep that Potion in your deck. Fairly interesting for a Market variant.
Contraption
Types: Action
Cost: $4P
+1 Action. Look at the top 3 cards of your deck and reveal one of them. Gain an Action costing less than it. Discard any number of the looked-at cards. Put the rest back in any order.
Mild filtering with a highly variable card gain. I think that's alright. I like it as a way to potentially gain expensive cards. I don't really think that it's worth $4P. Maybe the high cost could be a good thing if Contraption flips another Contraption, letting you gain an Alchemist... but that's pretty luck dependent, and it would be easier to just buy an Alchemist instead of a second Contraption in that case. I could see this costing $3P, maybe even $2P.
Metallurgist
Types: Action
Cost: P
+1 Buy. You may trash a Treasure from your hand. If you do, +P. You may trash a Potion from your hand. If you do, +$3.
I find this a bit underwhelming. This is a trasher, but it doesn't do anything particularly compelling compared to other trashers. It's terminal and trashes up to two cards. That's comparable to Steward, but Steward comes out ahead. You can't open with Metallurgist, and Steward has more utility after trashing is done. Metallurgist gives a few bonuses, but they are largely inconsequential. You won't be trashing Potion very often, and +P is not useful if Metallurgist is the only thing available. The real kick in the teeth is that Metallurgist can only trash treasure. That's a big limitation.
Nonetheless, Metallurgist could potentially find use if there are no other trashers on the board. It can also be helpful with other Potion cards on the board. You can pick it up when you miss $3P for Familiar and make it a lot easier to get it on the next shuffle.
Overall though, there are many other entries I like better.
Enclave
Types: Action
Cost: $2P
+2 Actions. You may discard your hand. If you do, +1 Card per Action card you have in play.
Ooh, a mechanic I haven't really seen before. Drawing cards for cards in play is actually pretty neat. I like how it combos with itself AND other action cards. I feel like it fits well with the theme of Alchemy. If you build your deck for it, it can be extremely powerful draw. The potion cost and the hand discard are good checks to keep Enclave from getting too crazy, except when it's justified (i.e. when you've built your deck specifically for that purpose). I like it a lot.
Clairvoyant
Types: Action
Cost: $3P
+1 Action. Reveal the top 4 cards of your deck. Set aside a revealed Action card. Put a revealed Victory card into your hand. Discard the rest. Play the set-aside Action.
Not sure if the "set aside" is necessary, but that's a minor wording thing. I'm also a bit curious about the Victory card draw. I suppose it can matter when about to reshuffle and to increase your hand size for cards that care about that. The action card stuff essentially makes Clairvoyant a village with some strong filtering. It's interesting, but it can be simplified and buffed pretty easily:
"+2 Actions. Reveal the top 4 cards of your deck. Put a revealed Victory card and a revealed Action card into your hand and discard the rest."
That does essentially the same thing as Clairvoyant except it gives more flexibility (can play two actions already in your hand, can choose order of actions played) and it can't whiff (when there is no action card in the next 4). Even like this, I'm not sure it's really worth $3P. Still, it could be interesting.
Alkahest
Types: Actoin
Cost: $5P
+1 Card. +1 Buy. Choose one: +2P; or +$3. You may choose an Action card in your hand costing at least P and play it.
It's alright. A bit boring, I think. Not sure it's powerful enough to warrant a $5P cost, and it feels very vanilla overall. I like Potion cards to be a bit more unique.
Kettle
Types: Action
Cost: $3P
Reveal your hand. You may trash any number of cards from your hand up to the number of Victory and Curse cards revealed. +1 Card. +1 Action. +1 Buy.
While this is in play, cards cost $1 less, but not less than $0.
Why "Kettle"?
The trashing is kind of interesting. Considering the card as a whole, the best strategy is probably to trash Coppers first. You want to get rid of them, but you won't be able to if you trash away all your green first. That's interesting. And then you get vanilla bonuses after the trashing, which further limits the trashing efficiency. All good.
But the card as a whole is scary powerful. This is Highway with built in +Buy and trashing. Highway is great with support. Kettle is its own support, everything it needs. Probably needs to cost $4P, maybe even more.
With some tweaks, it might be alright. Still, not sure if I really want this all-in-one powerhouse.
Incantation
Types: Action
Cost: $3P
+1 Card. +1 Action. Trash a card from your hand. If you do, reveal cards from your deck until you reveal a card that costs more than it and shares a type with it. Put it into your hand and discard the rest.
Trash Copper, find a Silver/Potion. Trash Potion, find a Gold. Trash Estate, probably just cycle your whole deck. All in all, that's pretty neat. Wording could use a bit of cleaning up, but this is simple and fairly unique.
Wizard
Types: Action
Cost: $4P
+1 Card. +1 Action. +1 Buy. Gain the cheapest card the player on your right gained last turn.
Clarification: This card has a unique back, like Stash. If there are multiple cards that have the same lowest cost, choose one of them.
LastFootnote's Note: This card doesn't work in its current form. Which has the lowest cost, Alchemist or Gold? Also, I have no idea why it has a unique back. So the player to your right can screw you over by buying a Copper or something, I guess. Anyhow, I meant to PM the author to discus changing the card but never got around to it. My bad. Author, if you want to discuss changes to this card, let me know! If you talk to me before Saturday, I can update the ballot. Thanks.
Well, LF has already pointed out a few big flaws with this card. I would add that this is not different enough from Smugglers to be interesting. I mean, there
are differences. Cantrip gives it a boost, and if the player to your right only buys a Province, you can gain that. But I think that's actually a bad thing. Smugglers is already a bit swingy in whether you get it on a turn where it can actually gain something decent. Wizard is a bit worse for that because it can gain much better things. Cantrip does mean it can fit better into an engine (easier to draw and play it every turn, thus more reliable than Smugglers), but then that unique back means that an opponent can mess with you. It can even get a bit political because of that.
Quicksilver
Types: Treasure Reaction
Cost: $2P
When you play this, reveal your hand. This is worth $1 plus $1 per Action revealed.
When another player plays an Action, you may discard this. If you do, gain a copy of that Action.
The value based on actions is OK. There is a bit of anti-synergy there, in that you might have to hold back on playing actions in order to get more value out of Quicksilver. Works better with terminals in that regard. The reaction is terrible. It's a popular fan card idea, but the problem is that the trigger is too common. Any game with Quicksilver just drags because everyone has to wait after playing every single action to see if anybody wants to react to it. It would be the most hated card in online play. It gets slightly more tolerable IRL, but the playres would have to come to an agreement on how to do it. Players would have to move slower anyway.
Distill
Types: Action Attack
Cost: PP
+2 Actions. Each player may return a card from his hand to the Supply. (Yours may come from your discard pile. You may trash it instead.) For each card returned, each player other than the one that returned it gains a copy of it. If there are no cards in your hand, discard pile, or deck, you win.
Uhhh, what? OK, it costs $PP. That's usually a bad idea, as I explain below for Elicitor. Does it work here though?
Each player essentially gets an optional play of mini-Ambassador. You get a far more flexible version of it. And then you have a new win condition.
This card is incredibly slow to play. People already complain about Scrying Pool, but this is far slower. For each player, instead of being a simple check (reveal top card, put back or discard) you have a whole series of actions. Do you want to return a card? If so, everybody else gains a copy. And then you have to wait for all those players gaining cards to potentially use reactions.
The new win condition -- that's actually a neat idea, but I don't think it works here. Most of the time, it's just too difficult to set up. Distill itself only removes cards one at a time. That's way too slow to bring itself to victory, especially considering the time it would take to do that with a $PP cost (so, verdict -- $PP cost doesn't work here). So you need some outside support. Chapel, probably. In that case, however, it might end up as a swingy race to see who has better shuffle luck to chapel down. If not Chapel or another strong trasher, maybe you could set up a deck to draw and play almost everything. That seems like the most interesting scenario.
But that's not all -- when you play Distill, everybody gets a chance to block you. It'll be obvious when Distill would give you the win, which means that your opponent can ALWAYS stop you, even if it means sacrificing a good card. So that means that the extra wincon pretty much never comes into play, except as a way to occasionally force an opponent to give you a card. It's worse with more than 2 players. Say you play this in 3p and meet the special win condition. The next player declines to return a card. Now the third player could be in a kingmaker position, choosing whether or not to return a card to stop you.
I like the idea of adding a special win condition, but there are just too many holes in this implementation.
Bottle Imp
Types: Action
Cost: $5P*
+1 Card. +1 Action. +1 Buy. +$1. You may trash this. If you do, gain a cheaper card.
If you have at least 2 Actions in play, this costs P less.
Market that can become a one-shot Workshop+. Fairly interesting. I really, really don't like the cost clause. $5P is already very expensive. By the time you could afford that, you'll be far enough in the game that getting two actions in play is trivial. Nobody would ever buy a Potion to get Bottle Imp unless there weren't any useful non-terminal cards available at all, and in that case BMX is probably going to beat any strategy that spends time picking up Potion.
Refinery
Types: Reaction
Cost: $4P
When you buy a card, you may reveal this from your hand. If you do, if the card you bought is an
Action card, set it aside when you gain it, putting it into your hand at the start of your next turn.
Victory card, set it aside when you gain it, returning it to your deck at the end of the game.
Other card, each other player gains a copy of it instead of you.
Feels overly complicated just due to the amount of text. Cards like Ironworks and Tribute make this kind of thing work because they simply grant vanilla bonuses. I also don't think that a Potion cost makes sense for Refinery. This is a pure Reaction card, which means it is not so great in multiples. The bonuses are decent, but not enough to warrant $4P. I think even $P is usually more trouble than its worth. It's also a little odd to have only "set aside" for the Island mechanic on Victory cards. Can I look at the cards that are set aside this way?
Also, I don't really like the "everyone else gains a copy" choice. It's not an attack, but casual players will probably try to react with Moat (or other reactions) anyways. And I think it's also broken. From how it's worded, this should be legal:
I buy a Curse. I reveal Refinery. Everybody else gains a Curse instead of me. I reveal Refinery again. Everybody else gains a second Curse. I reveal Refinery again -- third Curse. Repeat until Curse pile is empty.
That should be legal because the reaction is just reacting to the Buy, so it can be repeated. It's not like Trader where it reacts to the gain and becomes redundant if you reveal multiple times. So... there's that.
Retort
Types: Treasure Reaction
Cost: $3P
When you play this, it's worth $1 per differently named Treasure you have in play (including this).
When another player plays a Potion, you may discard this. If you do, gain a Treasure.
This name is already taken in
the previous contest.
It feels a bit too similar to the initial versions of Horn of Plenty, as mentioned in the Secret Histories. Feels that way, though it probably isn't. A better complaint is that it doesn't really fit with Alchemy, since it encourages a BM game rather than an action game.
Voodoo Doll
Types: Action Attack
Cost: $3P
+$2. Each player with 5 or more cards in hand discards an Action card (or reveals a hand with no Action cards).
I don't like this that much. This particular attack card concept has been discussed before, and most agree that it's a bad idea. Making others discard actions just discourages players from buying any action cards in the first place, thus pushing a BM game. That in turn makes the attack card a bit useless, since nobody else has actions to discard anyways. Does a Potion cost fix this? I suppose that players would be more willing to get some action cards and risk the attack, since the Voodoo Doll player would not be able to immediately go on the offensive by buying a Voodoo Doll. Still, I don't find it compelling. If a buy a Potion early and there aren't other Potion cards on the board, then my opponent knows what I'm planning and could just play BM, making my Potion a dead card. If I wait until the opponent has already committed to an engine, it's probably not worth it to get a Potion for VD. It's too slow and it would probably be better for me to continue building on my own engine.
Catalyst
Types: Action
Cost: $3P
+1 Card. +1 Action. +1 Buy. +$1. Reveal then discard any number of Action cards. For each card discarded, +1 Card, +1 Buy, and +$1.
Market that can also simultaneously Cellar and SC action cards. Sounds OK. Doesn't excite me that much though.
Brewmaster
Types: Action
Cost: PP
+1 Card. +1 Action. You may trash a card from your hand. If you do, gain a Potion. You may discard a Potion. If you do, choose one: Cards cost $2 less this turn; or cards cost P less this turn.
The action is a little too complicated. It's decently powerful. Actually, it's extremely powerful. But $PP is just a terrible cost to have, as I explain for Elicitor below. And it doesn't really do much that Highway and Bridge don't already do. The Potion cost decrease could be interesting, but I think that, in practice, it mostly just helps the first person to get Brewmaster to snowball into more.
Assistant
Types: Action
Cost: $4P
Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal an Action other than an Assistant. Discard the rest, then play that Action twice.
Not different enough from Golem for my tastes. Otherwise, probably works fine since Golem works fine.
Ritualist
Types: Action
Cost: $2P
+1 Card. You may discard a Potion. You may play an Action card from your hand. If you discarded a Potion, play it again. If it is a Ritualist, play it again. You may play it one more time. If you do, trash it.
No, I really don't like this. It just gets way too confusing too fast as you Ritualist other Ritualists. Much worse than King's Court and Procession chains. If the author really, really loves the idea and wants to refine it, I would suggest changing the order of some of those re-plays:
"You may play an Action card from your hand. If it is a Ritualist, play it again. You may discard a Potion. If you do, play the Action card again. You may play it one more time. If you do, trash it."
This way you don't have to remember if you discarded a Potion to that Ritualist way back at the start of the chain. Still, it's just too much. At least with KC, you know that the card is played thrice. With this, you have to remember whether it was played just once, or twice, or three or four times. Blah.
Elicitor
Types: Action
Cost: PP*
+1 Action. Discard a card. For each P in its cost, gain an Action card, putting it into your hand. If there is no P in its cost, +2 Cards.
If you have a Potion in play, this costs P less.
First thought is that $PP is a terrible cost. It requires colliding two Potions, i.e. as difficult as Treasure Map. But actually, Elicitor only costs $P because of the clause at the end. That makes the cost a bit confusing, which is a point against it. The purpose is so that Elicitor has extra self-synergy, allowing two actions to be gained instead of just one.
I don't really like it though. I don't think I would buy a Potion to buy Elicitor if no other action cards are on the board. The default action is pretty weak -- discard then Lab. It's just mild filtering and it doesn't increase hand size. I don't think that's worth a Potion cost. The other effect is way better -- discard a potion-cost card and you get to gain an action to your hand. That's good. But it's difficult to pull off. You need two shuffles to get two potion-cost cards, and then you need them to collide in other to make it work. So again, like Treasure Map, except it takes even longer to set up. Not only that, but you probably won't want to discard anything other than a second Elicitor. Most other potion cards you get, you want to play!
It might work and it might be really interesting, but I just don't really think it would. I'm averse to the Treasure Map mechanic.
Research
Types: Action
Cost: $1P
Trash 2 cards from your hand. Gain a card costing exactly $2 or $1P more than the total cost of the trashed cards in coins.
When you gain this, gain an Action costing up to $4.
For some reason, $1P is a cost that just feels a bit off to me. It's like, if you have $P then you're almost always going to have $1P... so why not just make it cost $P? The extra 1 coin feels unnecessary, and dropping it is just more fun because it opens up more options to a player with +Buy. It has a decent purpose with Research though. By costing $1P, it gives players an option to trash Coppers into Research instead of Estate. So that's nice.
Not sure how much I like it, otherwise. I don't know if a potion cost is really needed for this concept -- would love to hear opinions on that. Maybe it's too powerful with a regular coin cost? You could trash two Silvers into a Province, which is pretty good. And that's not even factoring the on-gain. Hmm.
Drunkard
Types: Action
Cost: P
Discard any number of cards. Draw until you have 5 cards in hand. You may discard a Potion or an Action. If you do, play this again.
When you buy this, +2 Buys.
The on-buy is certainly fun. The action... hm. It can be pretty good, though being terminal hurts it. The way you can do it again is fun. Since you have to discard, your hand size gets smaller and thus prevents an infinite loop. It's neat. There are enough reasons to justify the Potion cost, I think, but just barely. Interesting!
Edit: Actually, this can end up getting played over and over again ad infinitum, since it's fixed draw. Not sure how to feel about that.
Conjurer (B)
Types: Action
Cost: $3P
You may play an Action card from your hand three times. Either trash that card or trash this.
King's Court that ends up trashing the target or itself. I don't see the point of it when King's Court exists. The cost means that you can get it before the second shuffle... but it's just not compelling. It doesn't do anything different from KC and it's usually inferior. Why?
Elixir (C)
Types: Action
Cost: $3P
+1 Action. +1 Buy. +$1. Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal a Potion or a card costing at least P. Put that card into your hand and discard the rest.
Market variant that always draws a Potion or a Potion card. That's actually pretty neat. At first, it seems like it might be weaker than Market in general. However, it stacks with itself pretty well. On average, one Elixir will draw half the other Elixirs in your deck and your Potion card. That changes if you get more than one Potion or if you mix other Potion-cost cards in. If you get several Elixirs, it can draw up several others until it's worth more than Gold while providing +Buy at the same time. Pretty neat.
Enchanter
Types: Action
Cost: $2P
+3 Cards. You may play an Enchanter from your hand.
Hmm, not sure I like this. It steps on Cultist's toes a bit. Moreover, I'm not sure it really fits with Alchemy. Since it is mostly terminal, it doesn't really fit with Alchemy's schtick of big action chains. Yes, you can certainly chain a bunch of Enchanters, but you can't do much else. I guess this is alright, but it doesn't really grab me. I think the concept could be interesting, but I'm not convinced that it needs a potion cost.
Author
Topic: Treasure Chest Design Contest Card #7: Alchemy (Read 41771 times)